A review of tonight's Silicon Valley coming up just as soon as the problem is Terminator…
Things have been going so well for Pied Piper for the last couple of episodes that disaster had to strike eventually – it's in the show's DNA – and I was pleased to see that, once again, the problem not only came from within, but came from Richard and company being too smart for their own good. As many of you predicted after Monica's “too engineered” comments, not putting the beta into the hands of civilian users turned out to be a huge mistake, as the platform turned out to be too good for the average customer to appreciate, or even want to use. That seems like a mistake the guys would actually make, rather than something, well, engineered to create conflict for our heroes.
It was also amusing to see yet another intersection between Veep and Silicon Valley, with Richard disrupting his own focus group like Jonah did, but in a very different way: delivering a lengthy, and ultimately successful on a very small scale, lecture on how the platform works and why it's so awesome. This was perhaps the ultimate wonky Richard Hendricks moment, even if it failed in the long run.
Meanwhile, Gavin returning to power by putting Jack in charge of Hooli EndFrame – and, of course, pivoting into making the box rather than releasing a platform – was a satisfying payoff for both of the season's villains, especially since it continued the great running gag of Gavin's obsession with using animals to make his point to the board.
Couple that with the Gilfoyle/Jared lie detector bit – which has its own interesting payoff when Jared is briefly able to fool Gilfoyle about where the new users came from – and you have a good set-up to a finale that could lead to salvation, ruin, or something in between for the guys.
What did everybody else think?